Introduction

Words and phrases

Grammatical functions and case

marking

Morphology and syntactic valency

Periphrasis and constructional idioms

Conclusion

In dealing with the morphology-syntax

interface, there are four main thematic

areas to look at in order to understand how

these two linguistic domains interface.

We shall observe;

1.The demarcation of the empirical domain

of morphology and syntax:

•When is a multimorphemic sequence a word,

and when is it a phrase?

2.Morphology and syntax interact in two

ways:

•Syntactic constructs may form parts of a

complex word, and

•Syntax in its turn governs the use of

morphological case marking on words.

3.How morphological operations may affect

the syntactic valency of words.

4.Languages may have syntactic alternatives

to the morphological expression of

grammatical and semantic content, and we

might therefore want to know more about

the division of labour between morphology

and syntax in this respect.

Morphology deals primarily with the

structure of words, and syntax with the

structure of phrases. But how do you know

if a particular combination of morphemes is

a word or a phrase?

Is the lexical unit hard disk a word (that

is, compound of the type A + N), or a noun

phrase? How can we know?

The most important criterion for wordhood

is Lexical Integrity.

Lexical Integrity:

‘The syntax neither manipulates nor has

access to the internal form of words’

(Anderson 1992: 84).

Let’s take the English compound teapot

•It is impossible to take out one component

and topicalize it:

•*Tea, I bought pots.

• Teapots, I bought.

•Anaphoric devices cannot refer to parts of

the compound:

•*He took the teaipot and poured iti into the

cup.

A) Lexical Integrity implies that if we call

something a word, syntactic rules cannot

apply to its integral parts.

The importance of this criterion can be

illustrated by looking at the difference

between prefixed verbs and particle

verbs in Dutch.

Dutch has a syntactic rule of Verb

Second which requires finite verbal

forms in main clauses to appear in

second position, after the first

constituent.

However, the underlying word order in

Dutch is SOV (Subject–Object–Verb).

This means that in the surface form, the

verb moves.

If the verb is prefixed, the prefix moves

along with the stem, which shows that the

prefix is not a separate word.

On the other hand, if the verb is a

particle verb (that is a phrasal verb), when

the main verb moves, the particle is

stranded in the original position of the V.

This shows that particles are words on their

own.

Hence, we get the following contrast for the

Dutch

• prefixed verb doorzóeken “to search”

• particle verb dóorzoeken “to continue

searching”

a. Jan door-zocht het hele gebouw

John through-seek.PAST.SG the whole

building

“John searched the whole building”

b. Jan zocht tot 2 uur door

John seek.PAST.SG till 2 o’clock through

“John continued searching till 2 o’clock”

The difference between prefixed verbs

and particle verbs is reflected by the

difference in the location of the main

stress of these expressions:

doorzóeken & dóorzoeken

Particles bear main stress, whereas in

prefixed verbs it is the verbal stem that

carries main stress.

B) Lexical integrity also implies that

English verb particle constructions such as

to look up are to be considered phrasal

verbs because the two parts can be

separated:

John looked up the information.

John looked the information up.

Essentially, since syntax rules can break

it up, it violates lexical integrity and is

thus a phrase.

C) Lexical Integrity manifests itself in the fact

that syntactically governed rules of inflection do

not apply to the individual parts of a word.

Dutch:

•Ròd-eA ko’olN “red cabbage”

•This expression is a phrase because;

1. the adjective is inflected –e, as is the rule in

Dutch for prenominal adjectives.

2. the main stress is on the second constituent

kóol

•Zu’urAkòolN “lit. sour cabbage, sauerkraut”

•This expression is a compound word because;

1. The adjective is not inflected

2. the first constituent bears the main stress, as is the rule for Dutch nominal compounds

In English, a compound word is distinguished from a

phrase using stress

•Compound word: main stress is on the first

constituent. e.g. ‘greenhouse

•Phrase: main stress is on the second constituent.

e.g. green ‘house

D) The extent to which Rules of Anaphora

are subject to the Lexical Integrity constraint

is a debate.

When it comes to Anaphora, Lexical

Integrity constraint is seemingly limited.

Let’s take the following examples:

a) John likes [the guitar]i because he thinks iti

is a social instrument.

b) John became a guitarist because he

thought it was a social instrument.

In (a), [guitar] is co-indexed with ‘it’,

meaning they refer to the same entity. The

pronoun ‘it’ is interpreted as ‘guitar’.

In (b), the pronoun ‘it’ is also interpreted

as ‘guitar’.

However, we see ‘guitarist’ and not ‘guitar’ in (b). This would imply a co-indexation of the nature:

•John became a [guitar]i-ist because he thought iti was a social instrument.

If so, the Lexical Integrity constraint does not hold for rules of anaphora.

This however goes against the general observation that words, when embedded in complex words, lose their referential potential.

Rather, sentence (b) can be accounted for

like this:

• The pronoun ‘it’ receives an interpretation

within the domain of discourse evoked by

this sentence.

•The word ‘guitarist’ evokes the entity

‘guitar’, which is an entity in the discourse

domain, and thus becomes the referent or

interpretation of ‘it’

To demarcate between morphology and

syntax, there is the need for a formal

criteria. This is not exactly straight forward.

Take for instance the expression ‘yellow

fever’

Semantically, it is a lexical unit and is

stored in the English lexicon as such.

Morphologically, it is not really a word. Its

stress pattern is that of a phrase with the

main stress on the head word: yellow

‘fever.

Sometimes there is no clear demarcation

between between syntax and morphology.

Is there a NO PHRASE CONSTRAINT on

complex words?

•Answer: NO

•Phrases do occur as part of complex words.

Look at these examples of complex words from English:

•[special exhibitions] gallery

•[module for module] upgrade

•[drugs and rehabilitation] centre

The words in square brackets comprise phrases.

In the first example, [special exhibitions] is a phrase of the type A+N with the main stress on the second constituent.

However, not every phrase can contribute

to word formation.

For example, English phrases that have

determiners cannot be part of complex

words.

• *the [[the special exhibitions] gallery]

•This ungrammaticality has to do with the

fact that [the special exhibitions] with the

definite determiner is a referring expression,

whereas word constituents in non-head

position have a modifying, classificatory

function.

Affixation of phrases is possible, but it is

limited to highly productive affixes such as:

•The English nominalizing suffix –er

-E.g. do good-er, fast track-er, do-it-

yourself-er

•The Dutch equivalent –er

-E.g. vierde klass-er “fourth grader”

•The Dutch diminuitive suffix –(t)je

-E.g. twaalfuur-tje

“lit. twelve o’clock-DIM; lunch food”

From the above discussion we see how

morphology is demarcated from syntax.

However:

•Syntax can feed word formation.

•Morphology also feeds syntax by supplying the

units to be operated on by syntactic rules.

GRAMMATICAL FUNCTIONS

AND CASE MARKINGS

In most languages, the interface between the

semantic properties of a clause and its morpho-

syntactic structure (word order, case marking) is

partially regulated by the grammatical function

frame of the verb of that clause.

For instance, the English verb HIT denotes an

action with two participants: the one who hits,

and what/who is hit.

We refer to these crucially involved entities as

core arguments of the predicate ‘hit’

The Predicate Argument Structure (PAS) of this

verb can be represented as Hit x,y

•E.g. Kofi hit Ama.

PAS refers to the number and type of

participants/ arguments a predicate requires.

This relationship between the PAS of a verb

and its syntactic realization can be expressed

by linking the grammatical functions

‘subject’ (SUBJ) and ‘object’ (OBJ) to the

arguments of PAS.

HIT, xAGENT, yPATIENT Predicate Argument Structure

SUBJ OBJ Grammatical Function Frame

The two arguments of to hit are the core

arguments that always have to be expressed.

The number of arguments a verb requires to be

expressed is referred to as its syntactic valency.

In addition to the core arguments, there might be

other entities involved in specifying the event of

‘hitting’ such as the instrument and the location.

•e.g. John hit his enemy in the back with a

stick.

These latter specifications are always

optional, and such participants in the event

are usually called adjuncts.

The relationship between the two levels of

PAS and grammatical functions is often

predictable by linking rules.

If there are two arguments, then the argument

that expresses the Agent of the action will be

expressed as the grammatical subject, and the

other argument as the grammatical object.

If there is only one argument, the default linking

rule applies:

•When there is an intransitive verb, and the lone

argument will be linked to the grammatical

function of subject.

Linguists classify languages in terms of the order in which grammatical functions are expressed:

•SVO (Subject–Verb–Object), SOV (Subject–Object–Verb), etc. That is, we need these grammatical functions for syntactic purposes.

In many languages, morphology is used to mark grammatical functions, either through head marking or through dependent marking.

Case marking is a form of dependent marking

which signals the grammatical function of an

NP in a clause.

Indo-European languages with morphological

case systems show the distinction between

grammatical subject and grammatical object

by means of the opposition between the

nominative case and the accusative case.

If there is only one argument, this

argument is case-marked as a nominative.

When there are two arguments, the

subject is marked as nominative and the

object as accusative.

This system is called the Nominative-

Accusative system.

An alternative case system is the

Absolutive-Ergative system, used in many

Australian languages.

The following symbols are used (Dixon 1994: 6-

7):

S= Intransitive subject

A= Transitive subject

O= Transitive object

In the Nominative- Accusative system A and S

receive the same case marking.

In the Absolutive- Ergative system O and S

receive the same case marking:

•This system marks the object of transitives and the

subject of intransitives using the same case:

absolutive; subjects of transitives are marked

with a different case: ergative.

• PAS PREDICATE, x PREDICATE, x y

Grammatical

function

S A O

Nominative-

Accusative

system

NOM NOM ACC

Absolutive-

Ergative

system

ABS ERG ABS

Dutch

•Der Mann lach-t

The NOM man NOM laugh-PRES.3SG

“the man(S) laughs”

•Der Mann kauf-t ein Buch

The NOM man NOM buy a ACC book ACC

“the man (A) buys a book (O)”

Dyirbal

• ŋuma nanaga-nyu

Father ABS return- NONFUT

“Father (S) returned”

•yabu ŋuma-ŋgu bura-n

Mother ABS father ERG see- NONFUT

“Father (A) saw mother (O)”

In some cases, it is not only the case marking that

is ergative in nature, but also the syntax; as can be

seen in the construction of elliptical sentences.

In ellipsis, the second of two identical NPs in

coordinated clauses is omitted, as illustrated below

for English:

•E.g. John (A) saw his wife (O) and—(S) rejoiced.

•Here the transitive subject (A) and the intransitive

subject (S)- which has been omitted- refer to the

same NP.

Essentially, we see that the case marking that

an NP takes in a clause determines the

grammatical function that it occupies on the

syntactic level and vice versa:

•Syntactic constructs may form parts of complex

words (morphology), and syntax in its turn

governs the use of morphological case marking

on words.

MORPHOLOGY AND

SYNTACTIC VALENCY

The relation between the PAS and the level

of grammatical functions can be changed by

morphological operations.

The best known and widely studied example

of such a change is PASSIVIZATION.

In this operation, the agent of the

predicate is demoted to the status of an

adjunct.

The remaining argument, if any, will then

receive the status of S, and receive the nominative case in the nominative-accusative system.

This is illustrated in Greenlandic Eskimo:

• a) inuit nanuq people.ERG.PL polar.bear.ABS.SG

taku-aat

see-3PL.3SG.IND

“The people saw the polar bear”

b) nanuq (inun-nit)

polar.bear.ABS.SG people-ABL.PL

taku-niquar-puq

see-PASS-3SG.IND

“The polar bear was seen (by the people)”

In (b), the passive suffix has the effect of

making the original subject optional.

It can be added as an adjunct, marked with ablative case; whereas in the active sentence it is marked with the ergative case.

In (a), the person, number, properties of both the plural agent and the singular patient are marked on the verb.

In (b) it is only the properties of the singular patient that are marked on the verbal form.

• This is because of the non- argument status

of the Agent in (b).

In present-day Romance and Germanic

languages like French and English, there is

no synthetic passive form of verbs.

Instead, a periphrastic construction is

used, consisting of a passive auxiliary and a

participle.

E.g.

•Je suis insult-é par Jean

I be 1SG.PRES insult-PAST.PTCP.MASC.SG by Jean

“I am insulted by Jean”

Passivization is an operation that affects the

mapping between PAS level and the grammatical

function level.

It is not an operation on the semantic level since it

does not change meaning.

Only the form in which the meaning is

expressed is changed.

This is also proven by the fact that the

demoted Agent of the verbal predicate is

semantically still available, for instance as

a “controller”.

•Example:

a) The boat was sunk to collect the insurance money.

b) *The boat sank to collect the insurance money.

With the passive sentence in (a), the

demoted agent is still there semantically, as

the implicit subject of the verb [collect] in

the embedded infinitival clause.

In (b), the intransitive, non-passive verb

[sink] is used, and hence there is no agent

involved at all.

Consequently, an appropriate controller of

the subject of [collect] is not available in

sentence (b), making it ungrammatical.

The essence of passivization is the

demotion of the Agent argument, not the

promotion of the Patient argument.

The promotion of the Patient to the status

of grammatical subject is as a result of the

default linking rule.

The default linking rule requires that if

there is only one argument, it should be

expressed as the grammatical subject.

Dutch and German exhibit passivization of

intransitive verbs. (Impersonal passive)

E.g. Er werd enthousiast

there AUX.PASS.PAST.IMPF enthusiastically

gedanst.

dance PAST.PTCP

“There was enthusiastic dancing.”

In the above sentence, the agent is no longer

mentioned explicitly, and since the verb dansen

“to dance” is intransitive, there is no other

argument that can be linked to the subject

position.

However, since Dutch clauses with finite verbs

always require the presence of a subject, the

subject position is filled with a dummy word: er.

The different patterns of linking arguments

to grammatical functions are also referred

to as different VOICES:

•Active voice

•Passive voice

•Middle voice

Voices express the semantic relations

between the subject and the action

described by the verb.

The grammarians of Sanskrit and Greek speak

of the middle voice as a distinct verbal form,

just as we may have different aspectual forms of

a verb.

The use of the middle voice instead of the

active voice does not mean that the mapping of

semantic roles on grammatical functions is

different.

However, the middle voice marker changes the status of the subject with respect to the denoted action. Below is an example from Sanskrit:

a) Devadattah katam karoti

Devadatta.NOM mat.ACC make.SG

“Devadatta makes a mat”

b) Devadattah katam krute

Devadatta-NOM mat.ACC make.SG

“Devadatta makes himself a mat”

Thus, as the example shows, the middle

voice indicates that the subject is also the

beneficiary of the action expressed by the

verb.

ANTI-PASSIVE CONSTRUCTION

Instead of the Agent, the O (transitive object) can

also be demoted. This is the anti-passive

construction, found in particular in languages with

an absolutive-ergative system.

In this construction, the O can be omitted, or

appear with instrumental case. Hence, you get an

intransitive sentence.

The following example is from Greenlandic

Eskimo:

a) inuit tuqup-pai

people.ABS.PL kill-3SG.3PL.INDIC

“He killed the people”

b) inun-nik tuqut-si-vuq

people.INSTR kill-ANTIPASS-3SG.INDIC

“He killed people”

• Sentence (a) exhibits the normal case marking.

• In (b) we have an intransitive sentence, with

the word for “people” marked with an

instrumental case.

The effect of the anti-passive is to

‘despecify’ the direct object of the

transitive verb, if it is expressed at all.

Hence, (b) does not refer to specific

people that were killed.

Note also that the person–number

properties of “people” are no longer marked

on the verb. It is only the instrumental case

that is marked.

APPLICATIVE CONSTRUCTION

Instead of demoting an argument, you may also promote it.

This is the applicative construction that is found in many African and Austronesian languages.

For instance, the effect of adding an applicative affix to the verb may promote an instrumental or locative NP to the status of O(transitive object).

E.g. Atlantic language, Wolof.

a. Mungi lekk ag kuddu

PRES.3SG eat with spoon

“He is eating with a spoon”

b. Mungi lekk-e kuddu

PRES.3SG eat-APPL spoon

“He is eating with a spoon”

Also, an applicative affix can introduce an

additional beneficiary argument.

E.g. Mexican language, Classical Nahuatl:

• Ni-c-no-pa¯qui-lia

I-it-myself-wash-APPL

“I wash it for myself”

NOUN INCORPORATION is another way of

making transitive verbs intransitives.

It is when an argument of the verb is not

expressed by a separate NP, but as part of a

verbal compound. The verbal compound

then functions as an intransitive verb.

The following example, a one-word-

sentence, comes from the Amerindian

language Tuscarora:

• w-e-khw-əti-ʔ

FACTUAL-FEM.AGENT-food-make-PERF

“she meal-made = she cooked”

In Tuscarora, verbs with incorporated nouns co-

occur with verbs with independent noun phrases.

The difference is that the verb with incorporated

noun denotes an institutionalized action, whereas

the independent noun phrases have referential

potential.

This functional difference is nicely illustrated by

the fact that in Tuscarora you can have

constructions of the type She bread-made corn,

with both an incorporated noun and an independent

NP, meaning “She made corn-bread”

(Mithun 1999: 46).

The nature of Noun Incorporation;

Suppose we had an English verbal compound:

wood-chop

[Chop] is the head of the compound and

[wood] is the incorporated NP.

The PAS of chop is Chop x,y

The NP y is [wood] which is incorporated

into the verbal compound.

The only other NP, x takes up the position of

the grammatical subject, and thus, the verb

behaves as an intransitive.

What we see here, is that the semantic

interpretation of a complex verb may lead to a

syntactic valency that is different from that of

its verbal head.

The phenomenon of noun incorporation has led

some linguists to propose that some kinds of

word-formation can be accounted for by

syntactic operations.

Here, the incorporated noun is represented

as an independent NP at the underlying

syntactic level.

The noun is then moved to be adjoined to

the V in the surface representation,

resulting in a verbal compound.

For instance, the fictive English verbal

compound “to bed-buy” would be derived

as follows:

S S

NP VP NP VP

V NP V NP

N Ni V ti

I buy bed I bed-buy

The noun bed originates in the object

position of the VP, which is then vacated.

The empty position is indicated by t (for

trace), and is co-indexed with the moved N.

Through this co-indexation, the

incorporated N will be interpreted

semantically as the object of the verb.

And so in this analysis the intransitivization

effect of this kind of noun incorporation is

the effect of a syntactic operation.

-Baker 1988, 1996, for the Amerindian

language Mohawk.

CAUSATIVES

The choice of a morphological or a syntactic

analysis of word-formation plays a role in the

analysis of causatives.

Causative verbs are verbs where the A has

the role of the causer of an event in which

one or two entities play a role.

A classic example of a simplex causative verb

in English is to kill, with the meaning “cause

to die”.

The semantic structure of this predicate can be represented as follows:

CAUSE (x, (DIE, y))

Sentences with causative verbs denote complex events.

Many languages have causative affixes that turn

non-causative verbs into causative ones. The

semantic effect is the addition of a predicate CAUSE

and an additional argument, the ‘CAUSER’.

Hence, causativization has the effect of

increasing the valency of words. This applies

to adjectives, nouns and verbs.

E.g. Diyari, an Australian language:

•kidi “clever”(adj.) > kidi-ŋanka “to teach =

to make clever”

•muka “sleep”(noun) > muka-ŋanka “to put to

sleep”

Examples from Turkish

•Müdür mektub-u imzala-dt ˙

director letter-DO sign-past

“The director signed a letter”

•disçi mektub-u müdür-e imzala-t-tt ˙

dentist letter-DO director-IO sign-CAUS-PAST

“The dentist made the director sign a letter”

This example shows how the addition of a

causative suffix increases the valency of a verb. It

is an example of a valency- increasing operation.

Note that, causativization is a morphological

process that primarily affects the semantic

properties of a predicate, and hence the level of

PAS.

A CAUSER argument is added to the PAS of the

input word, which affects its syntactic valency

through the linking rules that map arguments onto

the grammatical function frame of a verb.

A syntactic approach to causativization assumes

that the causative suffix functions as a verb with a

complement that denotes the caused event.

However, the causative verb is a bound morpheme

so it cannot surface as a word of its own, and must

be combined with a verbal stem.

The verb of the embedded clause is moved to the

higher clause, and attached through adjunction to

the left of the causative suffix that functions as the

verb of the main clause.

S S

NP VP NP VP

S V S V

NP V NP V V V

Ali Hasan öl dür Ali Hasan ti öli –dür

Ali Hasan die CAUS “Ali killed Hasan”

In sum, verbs may carry morphological

markings that determine how their

arguments must be expressed on the level

of syntactic structure. The syntactic valency

of verbs may thus be affected by

morphology.

Periphrasis is used in situations where

single morphological forms of certain

constructions cannot be found. Instead, a

word combination has to be used:an analytic

form.

Constructional idioms are multi-word

expressions that are idiomatic in nature but

not completely fixed because some positions

are variable.

Examples of periphrasis English are the use

of auxiliaries + participles of main verbs

to express the perfect tense like; “had

called” and the passive voice; “was

called”.

In a number of languages, the progressive

aspect is expressed by a periphrastic form

of the verb ‘to be’ + prepositional phrase,

as illustrated by the following examples

from Dutch:

• Jan is [[aan]P [[het]Det [fiets-en]N]NP]PP

John is at the cycle-INF

“John is cycling”

• Jan is de aardappels aan het schillen

John is the potatoes at the peel-INF

“John is peeling the potatoes”

It is key to note that in the second

example, the direct object de aardappels

“the potatoes” is not located right before

the verb, as is normally the case for objects

in Dutch embedded clauses.

Instead, the object precedes the word

sequence aan het “at the” that signals the

progressive aspect.

Progressive aspect may also be expressed

by using postural verbs such as “to sit”

and “to stand” in coordination with a

main verb, as illustrated here for Afrikaans

and for West-Flemish, a dialect of Dutch:

Afrikaans

Piet staan ’n glas water en drink

Pete stands a glass water and drink

“Pete is drinking a glass of water”

West Flemish

Zij zat kousen en stoppen

She sat stockings and mend-INF

“She was mending stockings”

Note that it is only the postural verb in the

West Flemish sentence that has a finite form,

the main verb appears in the infinitive. (In

Afrikaans there is no formal difference

between infinitive and finite forms).

Such constructions with a periphrastic function

are constructional idioms.

Many languages have PREVERB + VERB

combinations that function similarly to prefixed

verbs.

The notion preverb refers to words that appear

before verbs, and form a close unit with that verb.

Quite often, these phrasal constructions function

as alternatives to prefixed verbs.

A Dutch example of a preverb+verb construction is

this: af V with the meaning “to finish V-ing”.

af is a Dutch particle that expresses a result. It

turns (in the following example) the

intransitive verb werken “to work” into a

resultative predicate:

• Bettelou werkte haar opdrachten af

Bettelou worked her assignments PARTICLE

“Bettelou finished her assignments”

Particle verbs are lexical units, but not words

in the morphological sense.

Analytic causative constructions are also

instantiations of constructional idioms.

In Germanic and Romance languages, the

causative meaning is often not expressed by an

affix, but by a separate causative verb such as

laten “to let” in Dutch and fare “to do” in

Italian.

The combination of the causative and the main

verb functions as a unit, and the recipient is

marked by a preposition, aan in Dutch, and a in

Italian:

Dutch

Ik liet het boek aan mijn collega zien

I let the book to my colleague see-INF

“I showed the book to my colleague”

Italian

Ho fatto vedere il libro a-l mia have.1SG make-PTCP see.INF the book to-DEF my

collega

colleague

“I showed the book to my colleague”

The unitary nature of liet zien and ho fatto

vedere manifests itself in the fact that they

select a recipient argument marked by a

preposition, whereas neither the causative

verb nor the main verb select a recipient on

their own.

Another type of constructional idiom that is

functionally similar to complex verbs is that

of SERIAL VERBS, found in many African,

Austronesian, and Papua languages.

Characteristics of such constructions are

that the two (or more) verbs denote a single

event. There is only one overt subject, and

one tense marker.

São- Tomense (Portuguese- based creole)

• Bisu vwa subli

bird fly.PAST go.up

“The bird flew upwards”

• Zon toma mantchin kota po

Zon take.PAST machete cut tree

“Zon cut the tree with the machete

In sum, languages may have syntactic,

analytic alternatives to the morphological

expression of meaning. These syntactic

alternatives may have the status of lexical

units and may exhibit special syntactic

behaviour.

CONCLUSION

We see from the above discussion that

Morphology does not just interact with Syntax,

these two branches of linguistics actually

interface. That is, they influence one another.

Morphology can dictate how Syntax is

represented or expressed, and vice versa.